


After the End of the World

by bisexualamy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-05-29 02:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6355903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualamy/pseuds/bisexualamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens to the queen of the universe once she's lost her throne?</p>
<p>Set a few months post-EoT, assuming Lucy survived the explosion at Broadfell prison.  Slight Lucy/Master, probably not a ton, and also general warning for mentions of past abuse which'll probably be scattered throughout this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1, Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully this will be updated semi-regularly, but there's no set schedule. The work will be four parts or "episodes" with 6-10 chapters in each part. This first bit is a sort of prologue/introduction, so it's short, but don't worry, they'll get longer.

_"Baby, baby, baby. You are my voodoo child, my voodoo child."_

Take a repressed woman conditioned since birth to be the perfect political family member, compress her within the rigid confines of upper class British society, and combine her with a maniac hell bent on taking over the world. Mix it up, and count down to the explosion.

Lucy Saxon was a ticking time bomb the moment her parents started to mold her into the perfect public daughter for her father, Lord Cole of Tarminster. While training her to smile at just the right angle, keep her mouth shut until just the right moment, and keep her life just private enough for the press not to get wind of any potential scandal, they taught her a valuable lesson about amorality: stay on top, and then nothing matters as long as you don't get caught. So, Lucy became a whirlwind of Machiavellian principles dressed up with blonde hair and light eyes, knowing just how to to adjust her expression to put any person at ease. A manipulator and a schemer, she used the tools once employed to subdue her to nudge events in her life. She might never be the queen, but damned if she'd settle for being a pawn.

That is, until she met Harold Saxon while he was getting his autobiography published. Slowly moving up in the world, she'd secured a position at a publishing company out of university, and watched as the men who claimed to shape the world walked through the building day after day, determined to print the contents of their minds. She had scoffed at them, but Harold Saxon was different. Something about him was hypnotic, enticing, a chaos she wanted to be a part of. When he rather forwardly asked her to dinner she couldn't stop her curiosity, and when he kissed her on the stairs leading up to her flat after that first date, the thrill was too much to let go of. Whatever he had, whatever he wanted, she wanted it too.

Months later they married, and she got her wish. A world ripe for the taking, burning at their feet, and she would be queen. "We're going to dance, darling," he told her one day. "As they die miles below us, we're going to dance on their graves."

She was about to tell him it was ridiculous, gaudy, and not proper of a world dictator to play pop music and dance during a takeover, but she stopped before the words left her mouth. Dancing on the graves of those who'd underestimated her, reveling in the power of the absurdity of it, the spectacle. She didn't need proper, she needed _that_. Lucy Saxon on her own was a quiet force, but the Master, the enabler of her most twisted fantasies, magnified her spite and projected it onto the world. He'd gone into this marriage expecting arm candy, an accessory to his fake political persona. What he got was a kindred spirit.

So Lucy Saxon danced as the world crumbled around her. She smiled as the Toclafane burned whole cities to the ground. She broke under the weight of his mania during the Year That Never Was, but never let him swallow her whole. And, when he finally dared to underestimate her, assume that she'd quietly comply with his resurrection, she took a final act of revenge. When he assumed that she was faithfully on his side, she made sure to show that she was on no side but her own.

She expected to die, but when she woke days later in a hospital miles from any major city, she proved once again that she might falter, but she'd never fall without a fight.

And sometimes, when she closes her eyes as she tries to sleep, she can still hear the music playing as she danced on the ashes of the world.

_"Don't say maybe, maybe. It's supernatural I'm coming undone?"_


	2. Part 1, Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A proper chapter! I told you they'd get longer so here you go. Also, warning that there are direct references to Lucy's past abuse mainly in both flashbacks, so if that makes you very uncomfortable maybe skip those parts.

One of the worst things Lucy ever did for herself was relocate to the suburbs.

After years of living in London, she'd gotten used to the bustling nature of cities. The constant traffic, the persistent footsteps, the chatter that all blended together in an ever-present hum, all the noise gave her a clearer head than the sight of pristine rows of houses sitting atop well-manicured lawns ever could. There was something too fake about it, too sterile and constructed. Besides, the familiarity of an environment carefully constructed to seem wholesome and welcoming was something she could definitely do without.

If Lucy'd had it her way she would've moved right back to London after the events at Broadfell. Her old flat had gotten a new owner within the first month her and Harry started living together, but finding another one wouldn't have been that much of a challenge for her, especially because she wasn't particularly picky. Just something big enough for her, as long as it was in the center of everything. Ever since she'd left the hospital she couldn't stand silence.

Of course, that wasn't what ended up happening. The explosion at Broadfell should've killed her, but by some miracle she'd survived, knocked unconscious by the force of her own revenge and waking up in a "nice home in the country" with a concussion and several broken bones. While at first she didn't understand why she hadn't been sent to a closer hospital, after learning that her parents got involved she'd realized what was going on. They'd been her one contact on the outside, her influential father smuggling her the materials necessary to stop the Master's resurrection. She'd never told him what the materials were for, simply that she needed them and that they could secure her release, and that was all the information he wanted. Plausible deniability was imperative, especially because her imprisonment had been a secret. Public record showed that she was out in a home in the country, recovering from the emotional distress of seeing her husband die in front of her. The words "mental hospital" were never used, but they were understood. An emotionally disturbed daughter touched by tragedy was much more palatable than a murderous one, and who was Lord Cole to argue with what the public wanted to believe? That is, when it suited his purposes.

It therefore became apparent to Lucy that actually sending her to this home in the country was the perfect way to tie the cover story up with a bow. Still, the doctors were dreadful and boring and treated her like she was made of glass, tiptoeing around her emotions like she would burst into tears at the mere mention of Harold Saxon's name. She resented this, not least of all because he'd trained her not to cry, but she nevertheless put on her most gracious of faces and thanked every one for their care. The first time she'd protested was when they insisted she stay out of the city for a while after her release, suggesting a quiet neighborhood where she could pick up the pieces of her life and start again. Yet, despite asserting and reasserting that London was the only place for her, her parents set her up in a small home in the suburbs. They told her that it was in her best interest to listen to the doctors, but she knew it was really in their best interests to keep her tucked away for a while.

Now, one morning a few days after moving in, Lucy lay in bed and counted how manny cars she could hear drive by. Her bedroom window didn't even face the road, but the door was cracked and if she listened carefully she could overhear the road noise drifting in from the living room. The grand total was two in five minutes, high for an early Sunday morning. Maybe, if she was lucky, a third might drive by and give her a little more hope that life still existed in this place.

The concept of the day's menial tasks seemed to be the pinnacle of the anticlimax her life was becoming, and to support such a reality by actually doing them felt disgusting to her. The weight of her body as she lay on her back protested ever leaving the bed, as if it agreed with her mind that going through the motions of life like the last year had never existed was an insult to her intelligence. It was a fool's errand anyway.

She closed her eyes, taking one more moment in the limbo between the night's sleep and actually doing something with the day, before getting out of bed. Fool's errand or not, she didn't have much choice. The alternative was checking herself back into that home in the country and letting doctors whisper about whether she'd ever emotionally recover from her trauma.

***

 _They didn't handcuff her. They couldn't, not when they wanted to keep the assassination under wraps and stow her away as quickly as possible without press interference. She wished they did, though. It would've been some acknowledgement of what she'd done, of at least her_ existence _. She'd spent months hiding in his shadow, caking her face in makeup, burrowing deep inside herself waiting to find a moment of strength, and no one helped. Not even the Doctor, who claimed to be so righteous, gave her a passing glance as she suffered in silence. And now, she'd shot a man, and they were too busy crying over losing the opportunity to bring him to justice to see that she'd already done it. Even after committing murder, no one bothered to acknowledge Lucy Saxon._

_Jack had taken the weapon away from her at least a full minute ago, but the impression it left in her palm felt permanent. It was the last tangible memory she had, and even though his bleeding body was in front of her, it felt like the last reminder of what she'd done. The rest of the thoughts in her mind felt fake, like a different person put them there. She didn't believe anything done by the broken woman who'd barely survived these last few months, least of all her thoughts. If she was one to cry anymore, she would've, but even in the face of freedom from his temper she couldn't bring herself to shed a tear. All she knew was that she felt whole again._

_She felt hands grab her wrists and realized by the roar of the engines that the airship was descending._

_"We're touching down in London," she heard Jack say behind her, still holding her tightly. "Do exactly what we tell you."_

_She didn't have the desire to put up a fight, not when that bullet required every ounce of the energy she'd saved desperately over the past months. Instead, she listened as the ship landed, and let Jack lead her down the ramp of the_ Valiant _and into the mass of reporters._

 _The Master's body had been carried out first on a stretcher, the story being that there'd been an issue on the_ Valiant _and they needed to make an emergency landing in London. By the time Lucy came out, shoulders covered by a jacket, they'd already seen the Master pronounced dead by the on-site medical examiner and carted off to the morgue. Flashbulbs went off the second her face was in view, and despite the fact that they were all asking the same questions, their voices sounded like indistinguishable chaos._

_"Mrs. Saxon! Mrs. Saxon! Care to comment, Mrs. Saxon?"_

_"My husband just died," she said with a bitterness indicative of a strength she didn't know she still had. "Can't you people have the decency to give me a moment to myself?"_

_That shut them up long enough for her to fight her way through the crowd, Jack just a half-step behind. He didn't stop following her until she approached a black car. A woman stood next to the backseat door, red fingernails drumming aimlessly on the window, and as Lucy walked nearer she opened the door and said, "good to see you, Mrs. Saxon. You've been sent for."_

_Lucy had assumed her parents sent the car, though suspicious of how fast the news had reached them. Regardless, a nudge from Jack told her this was her only option, and she climbed inside. The woman slammed the door behind her and then signaled to someone outside to allow the car to start winding its way through the crowd._

_Within twenty-four hours she'd be thrown in jail, and it was there that she found out they'd determined Harold Saxon's cause of death to be a heart attack. The lie felt like someone had spit in her face. The least they could've done was given her the satisfaction of being a murderess._

***

Lucy didn't remember leaving bed, getting dressed, or walking to her car. She did, however, remember making the conscious to skip breakfast after her stomach turned at the thought of eating, but she also didn't have the energy to worry about what that meant before grabbing her jacket. Then, everything blurred together. Her first real thought after she left bed was brought on by the bright white floor tiles of the supermarket reflecting the building's harsh florescent lights, when she squinted and determined that some kind of karma was making this experience as unbearable as possible.

After blinking away the spots in her eyes she had enough sense to grab a cart and begin walking up and down the aisles, eyes sweeping across various brightly packaged products and produce, never resting on any item for more than a second. It wasn't until she reached the other side of the supermarket that she realized she'd wound her way through every aisle without picking up a single item.

She stopped the moment she made this observation, standing in the middle of the freezer aisle in front of shelves stacked high with flavored yogurts. It was then that she realized she hadn't gone grocery shopping in close to two years.

In jail and the hospital her meals were served to her, and before, well, you can't expect the queen of the universe to _fetch_ her own meals, let alone cook them. At first the Master had made a show of meals, expecting whatever he wanted lavishly prepared at any hour, but within two months he'd gotten bored with this power play. Before they'd taken meals together, but soon she couldn't convince him to go near something so distinctly human.

_"I don't need to eat as regularly as you do, darling. Go to the kitchens by yourself, and I'm sure they'll prepare you anything you want."_

_"That's not the point. I want to eat with you. I want us to make them do our bidding together, like king and queen."_

_"I have more important things to do than entertain your little human fantasies."_

_"I just thought-"_

_"Shut up, and don't bring this up again. I'd hate for us to have to rehash this conversation when I'm not feeling so forgiving."_

"I'm sorry-"

She cut herself off when she realized she'd said the last two words out loud. Her gaze had been straight ahead through the whole memory, as if she was fascinated by the yogurt options in front of her, and when she looked down she saw white knuckles clutching the handle of her shopping cart.

"He's dead," she muttered, trying to convince herself, but something in the pit of her stomach made her feel otherwise. After all, if she survived the explosion, who could guarantee that the Master, champion of avoiding death, didn't?


	3. Part 1, Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there was a bit of a delay on this chapter, so thank you all for supporting me in the interim! I'm going to try and keep up writing this, and I know this one is pretty short, so I'm sorry about that. In terms of warnings, there are more direct references to abuse in this chapter, as well as aspects of paranoia and mentions of discrediting that abuse. Also Lucy experiences some dissociative symptoms in the middle of the chapter. The only specific instance I can give you is that the final flashback directly shows the abuse. The rest of these things are spread throughout so I can't tell you specifically what to skip if you need to skip it. If you feel you need to skip the whole chapter and want a quick summary of it, I'll put one in the notes at the end.

_"These events are absolutely dreadful, aren't they?"_

_Lucy looked up from her pocket notebook to see the guest of honor himself, Harold Saxon, giving her a wry smile. He held a glass of brandy in one hand, and after making certain he'd caught Lucy's attention with his comment, he made a show of checking the watch on his other wrist. When he realized time hadn't passed as quickly as he would've hoped, he shook his head and turned his attention back to the young coordinator who'd caught his attention._

_"You could've just asked me for the time," Lucy told him, eyes flitting back to her notebook before she closed the cover and put it away. "Practically my entire job is knowing exactly when things are happening, and then making sure you lot don't drink enough to forget to stay on schedule."_

_He laughed and, as if to accent her point, took another sip of his brandy._

_"Well you're doing quite the job," he said. "The whole thing is going so smoothly I didn't even notice you were here."_

_Lucy felt the smallest twinge of pain her in stomach, but recovered after a brief moment. He meant it as a compliment, she reminded herself. Her job was to fade into the background; it was what she was good at._

_"Then why'd you come over?" she asked, compensating for her momentary pause with a dry wit that she'd cultivated after a lifetime of dealing with politicians and members of high society._

_He chuckled, looking down at his glass and swirling the remaining liquid around before saying, "it appears you've caught me in a lie, Miss..."_

_"Cole. Lucy Cole," she replied. "Now get another drink. You're due for an impromptu and genuine toast to your benefactors in three minutes."_

_Harold Saxon looked like he was about to say something, but stopped for another second before saying, "amazing. Don't slip away, Lucy. I'd hate to lose the one thing that made this evening worthwhile," and walking over to the bar._

***

The hardest part about this was the silence. Lucy had never been one to reach out emotionally, it ruined the doll facade she'd spent years developing, and now, while she had the expertise to switch it on and off at any moment, she paid the price of emotional vulnerability. Even so, if she'd decided reaching out was a necessary evil, she couldn't. He was keeping her silent from beyond the grave. Forget the fact that the timeline didn't work out, that the year that felt like a decade for her passed in a moment for everyone on Earth. Forget the fact that she didn't have the evidence necessary to "prove" to the public that he'd harmed her. She didn't need the attention of an exposé, just a confidante.

But there was no one to tell. In the months of the _Valiant_ , when the planet was his dominion, she'd had no safe space or person. While the feeling of his omnipresence was strong on Earth, its weight crushed her on that ship. With no prayer of an escape from even his more frivolous of whims, she threw herself tenfold back into being his wife. The love, the dedication, she thought at first that if her devotion was strong enough he'd go back to loving her, but eventually her goal became simpler: self-preservation. Maybe if she did everything he said, he'd let her bruises heal before giving her new ones.

Now, instead of being universally feared, it looked like Harold Saxon was universally loved. In the months following his death the country turned him into a martyr, a tragic hero dead before his time. He would've brought Britain back from behind, they said. He would've given it a golden age. Instead of being trapped by the fickleness of his will, Lucy was now trapped by the fickleness of public opinion. If word of her claims got out the press would slander her and the people would turn on her. Besides, what decently intelligent person was going to believe her anyway? If she hadn't seen time reverse with her own two eyes, she might've believed that the entire Year That Never Was was simply a bad dream.

So she kept silent. As the white plastic containers of yogurt burned into the back of her eyes, she bit her lip and gripped the handle of her shopping cart even tighter, as if it would give her the strength to start walking again. She kept silent as she went into autopilot and walked back up and down the aisles, grabbing any food item that didn't make her stomach churn until her cart was full. She kept silent as the half-asleep teenager at the checkout rung up her items and swiped her card, and she kept silent on a drive home she couldn't remember the moment she stepped into her house.

The urge to cry manifested in the back of her throat, the pressure building until it was painful, but still the tears didn't come. She tried to swallow the tightness away, wanting to either sob her emotions out or feel numb again, but still it stayed. Again, she was in limbo. Limbo between emotions, between mental states, between the whole lives she'd experienced in perceived months. She'd gone from one half of "Britain's golden couple" to the queen of the universe to a pitied, cast aside widow in a moment that resonated as a lifetime. At this point, time felt fake. She'd seen madmen and false gods bend it to their wills regardless of which side of morality they claimed to stand on. What was once ever-present and unchanging was now a sham. Truth, reality, it didn't matter if her perceptions of them were real or not. Someone was going to come along and uproot it anyway. Doctor or Master, it didn't matter. He on the side of morality didn't pay any attention to her in the months when bruises covered her body. He on the side of morality tried to forgive the man who'd killed her spirit, and when she didn't allow that to happen, he cried over his body and abandoned her to the next entity ready to swallow her up.

As these thoughts ran through her mind, Lucy mechanically took her groceries out of their plastic bags and put them away. Pantry, fridge, she walked slowly. There was no space left in her mind for active thoughts of where food was supposed to go. Instead, she operated as she always did: going through the motions of a stable life in the hopes that one day she'd get hers back.

But as she went to put a carton of milk in the fridge, something disrupted this delicate system. Her hands had been shaking and she hadn't been paying attention to where she'd been walking. As she went towards the fridge, her hip caught the corner of the counter, and the bump caused her already unstable hands to drop the carton. It exploded, milk flying everywhere, drops getting on the walls and spreading across the hardwood floor. That was the push she needed.

The tears came before she even registered them, ugly sobs as she stared at the puddle of milk in front of her. They shook her whole body and she retreated into herself, practically convulsing as they wracked her body. She put a hand on the counter for support, suddenly not feeling able to stand without help, and as she cried and cried, devoting every ounce of energy she had left to her breakdown, her mind's eye played a scene she'd tried so hard to forget.

_He'd slapped her for speaking out of turn. He'd done it before, but she was tired, and he'd been moody, and she still couldn't quite believe something like this could happen to her. The tears welled up in her eyes, responding to the sting in her heart and her cheek. He stared at her quizzically._

_"Are you crying?" he asked incredulously. "For that?"_

_She thought he'd finally realized that hitting her was wrong. She thought he might've assumed it was no big deal, but if he saw her cry he'd realize he was hurting her. His Lucy, his faithful companion, the woman he loved. So she nodded, tears still in her eyes. That was her first mistake._

_"That was a tap," he said. "A pat, and not unjustified either. Are you going to start crying over every little thing I do? Anything that doesn't please you?"_

_"No, of course not-"_

_That was her second mistake._

_"Are you contradicting me?" he asked, taking a step towards her. "After I already disciplined you for speaking out of turn? You'll never learn, will you?"_

_He grabbed her bicep and yanked her closer to his face, their noses practically touching._

_"Harry, please-" she started, but couldn't finish. Her fear was making her shake in his grip and she turned her head away. He'd never gotten this aggressive before. It was her final mistake._

_"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't quite catch that."_

_He grabbed her chin and forced her to look back up at him._

_"Give me the respect I deserve. Look me in the eye."_

_But all he saw was the tears still falling down her face. He made a disgusted expression and pulled her to the wall, pinning her up against it before saying, "you want to cry, darling? I'll give you something worth your tears."_

_He hit her, much harder than he'd ever hit her before, and then grabbed her hair and threw her to the ground. She lay there, helpless and drained of all energy, as he stepped over her and went to their bedroom door._

_"I hope you've learned your lesson," he said casually, re-buttoning one of the cuffs of his shirt which had come undone when he grabbed her. "Do clean yourself up before I get back. You're so much prettier when you're smiling."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: The chapter starts with a flashback to when Lucy and the Master first meet at a press event for his autobiography. After it ends, we see Lucy still in the supermarket trying to collect herself, reflecting on the fact that she feels she has no one to turn to should she want to discuss her abuse. She attributes this to Harold Saxon's new beloved status in the eyes of the public, who've glorified in the months following his death. She then leaves the supermarket and returns home, starting to unpack her groceries but fails after have a dissociative crisis, doubting her own perceptions and the world around her. Her shaking hands cause her to drop a carton of milk on the floor, and this triggers a total breakdown for her as she finally allows herself to cry. As she's crying, however, she's reminded of the first time the Master hit her for crying, showing that this is the reason she's been trying so hard to conceal her emotions.


	4. Part 1, Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for waiting everyone! Finals are awful. Anyway, during the break this reached 100 hits and I'm so grateful to everyone who keeps reading and checking back. The flashback, like usual, is going to be a bit difficult to read. There are the typical mentions of abuse, but some of the descriptions are a little more graphic than the usual (though nothing as bad as last chapter's end flashback). Beyond that I'm not sure what specific triggers to cite, so just be wary going in. There's also a general warning for codependency and emotional manipulation which is an overall theme of this chapter.

Eight o'clock at night followed eleven in the morning. Lucy didn't know how long she spent in the kitchen crying, but her next memory was waking up on the couch with the floor spotless. Somehow, some way, she'd pulled herself together long enough to prevent the room from smelling like spoiled milk, make her way to the living room couch, and wrap herself in a blanket before letting her emotional exhaustion lull her to sleep. She didn't even remember dreaming, a small victory.

She took the remote off the end table next to her and switched on the news with little interest in actually watching it. There was just something about white noise that calmed her. Even hospitals play _something_ on tiny televisions to keep their patients from losing their minds.

"And tonight in traffic: watch for a four car pileup if you're traveling south on-"

Lucy tuned out the news anchor's words and instead stared at the colors of the television screen until they blurred together. The woman's magenta top made a particularly bright spot in the mess of grays and blacks in Lucy's vision, and as the reporter made sure to keep her gestures to a minimum and her facial expressions appropriately neutral, Lucy turned onto her back and looked up at the ceiling.

Trying not to focus on the fact that gaps in her recent memory were becoming ever more frequent, she tried to lull herself back to sleep by tucking the blanket tighter underneath her body, making a cocoon of it. If she closed her eyes and steadied her breathing, she could almost believe someone was holding her, watching over her as she tried to sleep. The warmth of another person lying next to her, the sensation of someone running their fingers through her hair, she almost believed it was real. Her breaths became longer, fuller, and the smallest bit of calm crept its way into her mind. Maybe it would be enough to get her through the night. Maybe-

_"My darling, don't you find it ridiculous how often you need to sleep?"_

Her eyes shot open. The voice sounded too real to be a figment of her imagination. She sat up and looked around her living room, gripping the blanket tightly, but saw no one. There'd been mind control. There'd been conditioning. She knew that. But she still had trouble believing it lasted this long.

As Lucy pushed the memory of his voice further away, she leaned against one of the couch cushions, still holding tightly to the blanket. Her heart rate was up, her breath was no longer measured, and she could hear the pounding of her pulse. How could one memory do that? How could the thought of his voice take away any chance at peace?

How had he turned her against herself? He was dead, and yet, he'd made it so that she carried on the torture in his absence. Even though he was dead and burned, she felt his grip on her mind grow tighter.

***

_Her shrieks and sobs echoed down the hallways of the_ Valiant _. Poised and proper Lucy Saxon, an emotional mess of tears and shaky breaths. The Master had given them their own wing on the ship as a statement of power and wealth, but now he mainly valued it as a way of keeping private matters private._

_She'd just woken up from another night terror. Disoriented and frightened to death, she had no idea whether she was asleep or awake, let alone where she was. As she felt around the bed looking for something to latch onto (a pillow, the bedspread, anything tangible) she didn't even have the sense to wipe away her tears and fully open her eyes so that she could see._

_He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into him. She screamed, thrashing to get away, shouting, "don't touch me! Please, let me go!" but he ignored her, holding her tightly in his grasp until she began to tire herself out._

_"Shh, darling," he said quietly, keeping his voice low and soothing in her ear. "This doesn't work if you fight me. Please, calm down. You know I know what's best."_

_She never listened at first, trying to claw her way out of his grip, sometimes kicking and always yelling whatever garbled words sounded right in her mind. She feared for her life in those moments, the images of the night terror still fresh in her head, keeping her between reality and the fiction of her mind. In his thoughts, he chided her for her foolishness. Stupid ape, couldn't handle differentiating between fact and fiction._

_"Please, please let me go! He's going to hurt me. He'll kill me!" she begged, still shouting. She saw him, the monster in her nightmares, pinning her to walls by her neck until she had trouble breathing, beating her skull into the headboard so hard she swore she felt her brain rattle, decorating her skin with bruise after bruise because he couldn't be bothered not to hold her so tightly when he dragged her down hallways or yanked her behind him as he walked. She needed to escape him. She needed to be free._

_"He won't hurt you," the Master soothed. "Not while I'm here. The safest place for you is here, with me. I'll protect you."_

_Slowly, her protests became sobs. She went limp in his arms and let her fear and sadness come out in tears. Now he knew the hard part was over. He gently pressed her head into his chest and began to run his finger through her hair, shushing her like a child. As her specific fears of the demon in her dreams gave way to a general, intense need to be protected, she curled up closer to him. His arms, not ten minutes ago, were chains keeping her from freedom. Now, they were the only barrier she had between safety and pain._

_"There you go," he said. "That's a good girl. You should know by now, darling, that nothing can touch you while I'm here. As long as you're mine, no one else can get to you. Isn't that right?"_

_She nodded slightly, still shaking in his arms._

_"I want to hear you say it," he said. "That way I know you believe it."_

_"As long as you're here, no one else can get to me," she repeated, rehearsed, monotonous._

_"And you're what, darling?"_

_"I'm yours. All yours," she said, trying to get as close as possible to him._

_"That's right," he said with a smile. "If you keep forgetting that, you'll keep having nightmares, but as soon as you remember and believe that, they'll go away. I do what's best for us, best for you, darling. You know that, don't you?"_

_"Of course," she said. "You made me queen of the universe."_

_"I did," he said. "I gave you the world at your fingertips, and I wouldn't let anyone take that away from you. I wouldn't let anyone take you away from me."_

_"I don't want anyone to take me away from you," she said, her voice still shaking of the thought that one day he wouldn't be her to save her from her nightmares. "You're my husband. I love you. I need you."_

_"I know," the Master said. "That's the way things should be. That's the way things are meant to be."_

***

Lucy woke shivering, her body covered in sweat and her eyes brimming with tears. She couldn't even make out the numbers on the DVD player's clock, only able to tell that it was very dark outside, probably hours since her last memory. She heard his voice, comforting her, telling her that the man in her night terrors could hardly be the one holding her now. She felt his arms around her, protecting her from the outside world when in reality the greatest threat was the one inside her bedroom. They'd gone through these motions a hundred times, and yet she'd been too wrapped up in the routine to notice the script. He'd planned every last detail of their conversation before she even started talking. He'd made her such a good pawn she had no idea they were even playing a game.

And yet. And yet she loved him. Even now she wished he was here, feeding her lies and petting her hair, telling her that no harm could come to her as long as she was in his arms. She wished she could still believe, like she once did, that the bruises were just the symptoms of nightmares, and that his temper was a remnant of the act he put on for the masses as their ruthless overlord. That when he held her late at night, when no one else was around, that was who he was. After all, that was the man she married.

She loved him, more than she wanted to admit, more than she wanted to notice the ache in her body and the piece he ripped out of her heart. She hated everything he did to her, how he beat her and used her and cast her aside when she wasn't useful, but she couldn't hate him. She couldn't do anything but love him.

And as she sat on the couch, blanket half kicked off her body, clothes wrinkled and hair a mess, running out of tears to cry, she felt herself say, "Harry, please, come back. Please, I love you," so softly she wasn't even sure if the words had left her mouth, or they were just a thought she was too afraid to say.


End file.
